Now, the convoluted series of deals that ended up being folded into the purchase of the Sci Tech high school building downtown are getting new scrutiny by the school board.

The renewed interest stems from a trigger-date that passed in November where the university originally was supposed to start paying the district back for a portion of its assistance.

Specifically, school board members now want to know:

If they are still owed $2.9 million, plus interest, as outlined in a 2004 memorandum of understanding between the district and university.

Whether the price listed for the three-story building that houses Sci Tech was inflated at $20.75 million.

Was the school district properly credited for the $5 million "cash advance" against the purchase price of the school?

How the money flowed between the two entities during the years the school board was controlled by the city.

If the scenario sounds familiar, it could be because the deals made a cameo appearance in the grand jury presentment against Reed to support criminal charges against him. All criminal charges relating to Reed's time as mayor, however, were later dismissed because the statute of limitations had expired.

School board members last month publicly questioned the transfers of millions to the university and wondered whether they are entitled to get any of it back.

"This district has been far too trusting," School board member Ellis Roy said at a budget and finance committee meeting. "This is not a little amount of money. This is millions."

Harrisburg University officials, for their part, say they owe no money to the school district. They say the school officials simply don't have the records or institutional knowledge of the older deals to know that all the terms have been satisfied.

That explanation, perhaps unsurprisingly, does not satisfy school board members.

"What exactly got credited?" board member Jim Thompson told PennLive. "What exactly transpired in the exchange of property for cash? Is what's spelled out in the documents what actually took place?"

Documentation of the deals, at least at the school district, is lacking, he said.

Documents filed with the county Recorder of Deeds office did not provide specific information about the financing of the project.

School officials said they haven't been able to get the documents from the university. But Steve Infanti, a district spokesman, said the district had not made a request.

"We haven't been contacted by them about this," he said. "We'd be happy to sit down with them and show them we don't owe them any money."

That said, the university declined to provide closing documents or specific proof to PennLive, instead directing PennLive to the "courthouse," city, school district and school board solicitor.

Thompson said school districts can get reimbursed for school construction projects under the state's Plan Con program. The process requires detailed documentation and three appraisals. Was the Sci Tech project submitted for that program? If not, Thompson said, then why was that money left on the table?

The spokeswoman for the state department of education did not return an email or phone message from PennLive Monday.

PAPER TRAIL

The paper trail for this series of deals includes the MOU from 2004 that Harrisburg University would pay the school district $290,000 per year, starting in November 2016. The payments were supposed to span ten years.

In exchange, district officials were supposed to provide help Harrisburg University with construction, "technical assistance," and "academic support."

School board members questioned at the committee meeting last month why no one had followed up on the lack of payments.

As it turns out, the repayment obligation was supposedly voided by a follow-up MOU inked in 2006 that school officials did not have in their records.

In this document, that the university provided to PennLive, the university notes the two cash "advances" provided by the district of $3.25 million and $5 million. The document says the debt obligation of $2.9 million plus interest would be "forgiven" if the $5 million was credited toward the purchase price of the Sci Tech campus.

The document includes the typed date of "Oct. 12, 2016" in the header on the first page but no dates listed near the signatures on page five.

The deal is a head-scratcher for school board members for many reasons, including the unspecified "support" that the district was supposed to provide to the university and why the payment obligation would be voided by a previous cash advance.

The document also says students from Sci Tech will be granted scholarships to the university, which prompted board members to ask whether that promise had been satisfied.

Infanti, from the university, told PennLive that 364 students had enrolled from the Harrisburg School district since 2005. He noted the university requires at least a 2.7 grade point average for admission. He would not provide the number of Harrisburg city students who graduated with degrees from the university.

The grand jury presentment against Reed noted that the district superintendent and Board of Control members at the time were unaware of these deals when they were struck. The former superintendent, Gerald Kohn, told the grand jury that he learned about one of the deals when an audience member stood up at a public board meeting to thank the district for "it's $3.25 million gift."

"I can't tell you how surprised I was, as was everyone else," Kohn told the grand jury. "There was outrage. Literally, you could hear the jaws hitting the table as we heard this."

Kohn demanded an explanation from Reed later and was told that the gift "was the beginning of a down payment" on the Sci Tech building, for which Reed had agreed to pay $20 million. Reed said he had obtained $4 million in private contributions from "a number of business people" for the project, but that money is not documented in the agreement of transfer for the property.

THE CAMPUS

The Sci Tech building originally opened at 215 Market Street as property of the university. Its construction was paid for through a matching $10.6 million redevelopment grant from the state.

That means taxpayers statewide originally footed the bill for at least half of the project, then Harrisburg taxpayers paid for the same building again a few years after it opened.

The state's Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program does not forbid the sale of buildings financed through RACP grants.

A spokesman for the university said they put the full $21.2 million into the building.

But archived newspaper articles from when the school opened referred to it as a $16.4 million project. The architect referred to it as an $11.5 million project on a website promoting various projects.

The county website, meanwhile, lists the building's value at $5.85 million, which is supposed to reflect the property's value in 2002, the date of the last countywide assessment. Using the state-assigned ratio to bring it up to current market value, the building should be worth $8 million, at least according to the assessment.

Thompson said he would like to see the appraisals done on the 80,000-square foot building as part of the sale. It was reportedly appraised at $20.75 million.

An agreement of sale was originally signed in October 2006, but the actual closing occurred in June 2008. Documents filed with the Recorder of Deeds simply acknowledges the sale without any appraisal or specifics regarding the financing.

And that's the rub for school officials.

"We're trying to restructure what really happened," and where the $5 million was credited, said Bill Gretton, the district's business administrator. "If that was the agreement, so be it. But someone should have written it down that it had been satisfied in that manner."

Samuel Cooper, the school board solicitor, said he is left with many questions. Board members have asked him to investigate the various deals.

"Part of this was tit for tat," Cooper told board members at last month's meeting. "But was tit or tat ever given?"

When school board members questioned the legality of giving away school district money to a private institution, Cooper said, "I am not so sure that it was proper for the money to be handled like that."

If it turns out that all of the obligations have been properly satisfied, Thompson said there still remains an issue of public accountability.

The deals "certainly weren't done in a way that was transparent," he said. "We're skeptical. Show me the documents."